In a blurb about the new Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook, this description of the difference between David Chang and his dessert chef Christina Tosi:

In the Momofuku kitchens, where chefs are hospitalized for anxiety-related skin diseases, Tosi is calm. Tosi doesn’t yell. There is no need. She is Samantha from “Bewitched”—she is all serenity, because she knows that things will work out fine in the end. If someone screws up in a Dave Chang kitchen, Chang will scream and rage and tell the person he has no integrity and might as well be working at KFC; then he will have to lie down for a day to recover. One imagines that if anyone ever screwed up in a Christina Tosi kitchen, she would wiggle her nose and, with a magic ping, that person would simply disappear.


Also, Chang bought her 240 Take 5 candy bars for her birthday and challenged her to eat them in a month.

The Boston Globe recently completed a 5 month investigation into area restaurants mislabeling fish on their menu. The Globe collected samples from 134 restaurants, 183 samples in all, and mislabeling occurred in 87 or 48% of the cases. 24 of 26 fish labeled red snapper were not red snapper, and all 23 samples of white tuna were not white tuna. Interesting that over half of the mislabeled fish were either red snapper or white tuna. Without castigating any of the restaurants, some bigger names, chefs and chains, were found on the wrong side of the investigation.

I'd think the Globe could find other things to investigate for 5 months, but I'd be willing to forgive that if they had at least headlined the story, "Something Fishy" like I did.

Ferran Adria has another new job. Sports nutritionist for FC Barcelona's youth team. (The other one is at Pepsi).

The Spanish club recruited famed chef Ferran Adria on Thursday to revamp its youth academy menu. The European champions say the former El Bulli chef will redesign the club's La Masia meals to 'foster healthy eating and exercise' by providing the Catalan club's future stars with the best possible diet.

Via Esquire

El Bulli is closing on Sunday right around the time that a new documentary, Cooking in Progress, about the famed restaurant is coming out. Along with the movie, there are a bunch of interesting links out there the last couple days.



*The NY Times reviewed it here.
*With the closing, the media has flocked and told us about it. This article is indicative of the "My Meall at El Bulli" genre.
*Earlier in the month, Mark Bittman wrote about cooking with Ferran Adria.
*An interview with Cooking in Progress maker, Gereon Wetzel.
*From several months ago, but still interesting, the NYTimes talks to several chefs about Adria's legacy. David Chang:

The fact is, he moved the entire spectrum of food in every direction, so that as a chef, even if you don’t like his style, he redefined everything you do. Closing down for half the year to do research? Changing the entire menu, 50 new dishes, every year? Amazing.

*Xanthe Clay calls Adria, "the genius that inspired a thousand restaurant disasters".
*And an interview in GQ talking about 'The Best Chef in the World':

That title doesn't exist. That person doesn't exist. Certainly when one is talking about the best chef in the world, one is referring to the influence that person has had in the field. If you have a lot of influence, then you're one of the best. That individual doesn't exist, and after all I don't work to be the best, I work to enjoy life. The consequence of that is that you're recognized for your work. I like to be recognized, but I don't work for recognition.

Trailer above via Kottke.

I don't know if anyone saw this coming... Ferran Adria, chef of elBulli, is going to be working with Pepsi on whatever it is that amazing chefs do for giant food companies. I like Coke better, so this is frustrating.

I don't want to shock anyone, but we may have been mislead. I think I saw the Olive Garden commercial touting their cooking school about 15 times before the message internalized and I realized that Olive Garden was talking about a cooking school to which they send their chefs and managers. I don't know if any of you have been to an Olive Garden lately, but I think they need to take a look at the curriculum. Turns out the school is more of a vacation, then educational facility.

I was a manager at Olive Garden and was sent to their culinary institute in Tuscany back in 2007. It was more like a hotel, during the off-season, with restaurant on site. They would let the Olive Garden come and stay in all the rooms and they would use the restaurant as a classroom for maybe an hour here or there and talk about spices or fresh produce for a minute before going site seeing all day. The only time we saw the "chef" was when she made a bolognese sauce while taking pictures with each of us to send to our local newspapers. Basically, yes, they send people to Italy every year. As a manager I still got paid my salary and didn't have to use vacation time, it counted as "work". They paid for everything from meals, sightseeing, flight, everything except souvenirs. But in return, they sent pre-written articles to out local newspaper with fake quotes from me and a group photo. Also every year when they would run the promotion, I was supposed to wear a special "chef" coat and make conversation with guests who ordered the promotional meals.

Here's a list of the 129 service rules for La Bernardin in New York City from a chapter in Eric Ripert's 2008 book, 'On the Line'. The list was published on 4 or 5 different pages by the Star Tribune, and I figured they'd be better all on one page.

1. Not acknowledging guests with eye contact and a smile within 30 seconds. First impressions count!
2. Not thanking the guests as they leave. Last impression!
3. Not remembering the guests' likes and dislikes!
4. Not opening the front door for guests.
5. Silverware set askew on the tables.
6. Tabletop that isn't picture perfect.
7. Forks with bent tines.
8. Unevenly folded napkins.
9. Chipped glassware.
10. Tables not completely set when guests are being seated.
11. Dead or wilted flowers on the tables.
12. Tables that are not leveled.
13. Salt and pepper shakers that are half empty.
14. Salt or sugar crusted inside the shakers.
Read the rest of this entry »

I've been doing a lot of food events around Boston the last year and a half or so, and I'm not sure how good of a job I do posting about them here. One of the things I've been working on is pop up restaurants. We were featured in a story in the Globe about our pop up in a coffee shop. For Valentine's Day Weekend, we're putting together a restaurant inside of a chocolate factory. Gotta say, that's a pretty good Valentine's idea, huh?

Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert have opened a new tapas bar, 41 Degrees, in Barcelona, and by next month, they'll open a restaurant next door called Tickets.

The Adrià brothers, Ferran and Albert, plan to open a sit-down tapas restaurant near by next month. It will be called Tickets, will cater for 50 diners at a time and will take reservations. Last year, Adrià announced that he would close El Bulli for two years. From 2014, the restaurant in the town of Roses, about 100 miles north of Barcelona, will reopen as a creative culinary foundation serving the odd meal for the lucky few.

Also noted in the article, El Bulli was losing £412,000 a year. This translates to roughly a lot of US dollars, and helps explain why it's closing/reopening as something more of a culinary foundation. I'd heard it was losing, but didn't know how much.

While we're here, I have a couple other Adria articles I'd tabbed, but not linked to yet:

Here's a 2003 NY Times Magazine article trumpeting Spain's transcendence in the world of food.

Spain rising, France resting. The more attention I paid, the more I noticed everywhere this invidious comparison, between smug, stagnant France and innovative, daring Spain. It seemed, as Trotter suggested, a shift in the zeitgeist.

Profile of Adrià and El Bulli in Vanity Fair.

Book excerpt from The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food.

2006 profile from the New York Times, and 2007 profile from The Observer.



"Those who want to live experiences cannot be cowards. We endeavor a cuisine for non-cowards."

The New Yorker recently profiled The Spotted Pig chef April Bloomfield and among other things discussed what it takes to work for her:

If David Chang’s band of renegades are the Red Sox of the New York restaurant world, Bloomfield’s cooks are the Yankees, square and conscientious. When I asked her what kind of people she likes to hire, she replied, “Nobody weird. Nobody with dreadlocks.” She paused a minute, and added, “Well, no white guys with dreadlocks.” Her cooks wear black pants and black shoes. “People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen.”

I also thought this was interesting, about why a restaurant would want a farm. Status symbol.

They both want a farm, where they can grow vegetables and raise livestock for use in their restaurants. A farm is attractive for two reasons. The first is that Bloomfield can’t always procure the calibre of ingredients she wants, since many of the city’s top suppliers are beholden to more established chefs. “They get all funny,” Bloomfield said. “I’m not Daniel Boulud.” The second is that a farm, in the hyper-competitive New York restaurant world, is a sign of clout and longevity, the breadbasket of an empire. Bloomfield and Friedman have been looking at land in New Paltz and Wassaic.